Ham radio always boils down to some sort of competition. Whether it is on a large scale such as Software Defined Radios or Hardware Defined Radios or on a smaller subset such as appliances boxes versus homebrew. Of late it is the stupid contest weekends ongoing for the last 4 weekends. So, OK for contests but not 4 weeks in a row!
Pencil Type Vacuum Tube
I only need to look back on my past experience when the competition was Tubes versus Solid State or the huge late 1950's competition AM versus SSB. The above pencil type vacuum tube was developed for hearing aids and proximity switches in munitions. A true sub-miniature tube.
Several of these pencil type tubes found their way into a custom built 15M SSB Transmitter project sponsored by Ted Henry (W6UOU of Henry Radio). This transmitter, called the Little Argonaut, was shipped out to various Pacific islands and used to provide DX Expeditions to places sought after for DXCC. See the 1st Photo, CQ Magazine cover May 1960.
These competitions never get fully or definitively resolved -- as a group we tend to cope and/or move on to the next controversy. Now it is which SDR Software is the best. Or FT-8 is not real ham radio! This also extends to the competition between Analog versus Digital VFO's.
I was looking at a video the other day of a radio I built in 1998/99 based on the W7ZOI famous 20M QRP SSB transceiver (Dec89, Jan90 QST). It had an analog VFO --not just any VFO but one well-constructed in a shielded metal box with 1/4-inch walls, with an Air Core coil isolated for vibration and of course the multiple caps for current sharing. Yep, it drifted and were it not for the EI9GQ VFO stabilizer it would have been a complete bust. Today a $20 bill would buy the parts for a digital VFO that could have dual VFO's with memory and no drift.
But one thing for certain, things will change, and they do change. Truth is that some of the former leading-edge approaches can be revisited and thence a new track and new competition.
In yesterday's email inbox was a note from a ham who had previously started work on a phasing receiver and now was headed back to working on it. Of interest he is using "Sputnik Rod Tubes" for the detectors just like the two pencil tubes shown earlier. Now there is a challenge as the detectors are not unlike a pair of Direct Conversion Receivers 90 degrees out of phase and prone to noise pickup -- that will be a special challenge to the build using rod tubes.
My most recent experience with SDR versus HDR has given me an eye-opening experience. The first piece of evidence is that either mode will net a logbook full of contacts given the same power and same antenna. So, factoid one, either will provide QSO's. But the second factoid for me, I prefer to listen to the SDR as the "presence factor" heavily weights the preference to the SDR and I have a lot more HDR radios. If I want listening pleasure, then SDR is the choice for me.
73's
Pete N6QW
BTW at one time I had a bag of those pencil tubes and built several modules of a SSB transceiver using those tubes.